I had no fantasies. I looked out the window and they had all left me. I was wandering the hills as a light being travelling the spine of a world falling to the left and right of me. I had no height. My mouth was the only thing that remained in the shape of a heart.

I want to feel a warm body.

Puerto Rican Courtney Love fucking Asian Mel Gibson.

If I were to ever be involved in some kind of accident and it became necessary to amputate both of my legs, and I had the option to, I would choose to receive prosthetic replacements. I would request that blade kind. I have heard them called ‘cheetah’ legs. I would ask for them to be made bigger. I wouldn't want to be my old height. I would want to be at least a foot taller than I am now. Seven feet. I know that being seven feet tall is no extreme. There are plenty of people in the world that are seven feet tall. But I feel that seven feet represents a height outside of any everyday pedestrian experience. I want to instil a small amount of fear in people. I want people to be scared of how tall I am, of how lithely I move past them. I want people to be frightened of how much I do not notice them, and then relieved that I didn’t, because if I had they probably wouldn't have caught their breath back and most likely died.

My fantasy as a confirmed straight guy is to grab with my two hands a really big cock and put it in my mouth.

I am water – I am the sea, I come out of the taps, in the bath, shower, swimming pool. My water body is holding others without having to speak, I can warm people and cool them down. I am everywhere and I am loved.

When I allow myself, I imagine that you actually want me. When I'm being really generous, I imagine that you even miss me. I imagine that I meant something to you, even if it's not what I hope it to be, and most of all I dream that when you said you wanted to fuck me sober, you actually meant it.

I often talk to my father who died in a hurry last year. His absence is complete and irreversible, like a dagger cleaved a gaping hole through our lives. It's if he stood up and walked out of the room mid-sentence and I'm left blinking with my mouth open, words formed on my tongue but no one to hear them. So I tell him our news. Sometimes out loud, sometimes I just call to mind his expressions, his tone of voice, a phrase he was fond of repeating. I know what he would say about this or that, I can almost see his face and hear his voice.

Stephen Colbert & Guest

G – I saw Bill Maher on your show the other night

SC – Yeah?

G – Man that guy’s a [bleep]

SC – Really? You don't like his withering satire?

G – It's not that I don't agree with him on most things, he's just such a [bleep] about it. It's like Richard Dawkins, seriously that guy needs to chill out. They give atheists a bad name.

SC – So you're an atheist?

G – Sadly yes.

SC – Sadly?

G – I'd much prefer to be on your team. The hope of an afterlife would be awesome.

SC – Well, that can go one of two ways...

AUDIENCE LAUGHTER

SC – So if you’re an atheist, what good things does a heathen like yourself see in religion?

G – There is plenty of evidence to show that one of the reasons humans are the most dominant animal on Earth is because of the community, cohesion, and complex social dynamic that shared stories, beliefs, and ceremony that religion bring. Religions at their best remind us of the virtues that bring long-term happiness, they remind us of altruistic ideas – they try and remind us not to be dominated by our short-term desires.

G – At their core they don’t encourage the kind of narcissism and self-centredness that social media and creeping neo-conservative philosophy promote.

SC – But if it’s all make believe, doesn’t that mean it’s stupid?

G – We all live our lives based on make-believe stories, yours might be a Catholic story, hers might be a Star Wars story, and mine might be a novel by Murakami – it’s all the same. Stories are what help us decide how we live our lives, they help us find our moral compass. That’s why I can’t trust a person who doesn’t have a favourite book.

SC – So what about all the bad stuff religion does then?

G – I think people use religion to do things they want to do for other reasons. For example, the hijab – as far as I know there is nothing in the Qur'an that says women have to wear the hijab, it says both men and women have to dress ‘modestly’. The hijab however was something women historically in the middle east wore for other cultural reasons well before Islam.

SC – What about that though, how do you feel about the way women are treated in that area of the world?

G – To my mind it’s not great, Saudi Arabia seems pretty bad. So yeah, where a religion really is defining that men and women aren’t equal I can’t agree with that. Thank God I’m an atheist.

SC – Amen to that.

AWKWARD LAUGH FROM SMALL PART OF THE AUDIENCE

If we had the baby, and you didn't leave me, and I didn't leave you.

I'm on the bus, it's 20 past 10 in the morning and I've chosen a seat near the back by the window. The ride to university takes an hour and I like to be comfortable. There's no one sitting next to me, thank God. I can see the bus is half full of bobbing heads while I stare at the horizon line, dotted with grey buildings. Everyone looks the same.

Without warning, there’s the sound of a truck, a deep rumble, an ear pounding crack and the bus is on its side. Glass, back packs, hair and blood.

I’m awake. I think I have a dislocated ankle, could be a broken leg. Adrenaline. I clamber over the sideways chairs to the other side of the bus, now the roof, and assess the casualties.

Six are conscious – breathing – stable – possible injuries. Eleven are unconscious – breathing – require medical attention. One has a broken shoulder – crushed pelvis – bleeding from the stomach. Four are unresponsive – not breathing.

I identify the six conscious, learn their names and ask them where it hurts. I tear and rip my own clothes to make bandages and slings. I tell them it’s going to be ok and to hold on. I reach the woman with the broken shoulder and crushed pelvis. Claire. She's in pain, a lot of pain and won’t stop bleeding. I hold her hand while applying pressure with the other to her lower stomach. I ask about her family, she has one sister and one brother, her parents are over seas and her husband is at work. Her eyes roll to the side and her grasp becomes limp.

-sirens-

It’s a long ride to town. While I sit on the bus near the back by the window, I drift into tragedies. I often wonder, all the things that could happen, our little lives, our big lives, the type of person I would want to be. Could I be that? Should I be that? I'm studying to be an accountant.

As a little girl, when life felt a little crazy I would stand still and fantasise that every surface was covered in bright white shaving foam. A land of total hush, where you had to stay still and not to disturb a single bubble.

We wake up together, arms and legs all entwined. I make coffee while you doze and I bring it to bed, we drink it and lie on top of each other. Piles of blankets, it's cold outside and you decide to take the day off work. We nap and listen to Tears for Fears.

I've always wanted someone to dress up as Mrs. Claus for me. And then we'd play out the scene in the North Pole when Santa gets home from delivering all those gifts in one night.

I'd come stumbling through the door, with my large buckled black leather boots clunking on the floor as I kick them off.

"Oh, it was a rough one tonight mother," I'd say to my loving spouse dressed in a Mrs. Claus costume. "Russian military locked onto us again! Rudolf hasn't stopped shaking yet."

I'd throw myself down into a large wing-backed chair, and she'd bring me over a cup of wassail, heavy on the Madeira. She'd rub my shoulders with her strong, yet feminine, farm housewife hands. "One more year father," she'd always say with a tone of consolation. "Just one more year and we can pass all of this off to Randy, and retire to Hawaii like you've always wanted".

"Randy?!", I'd bellow, "That worthless sack of poorly spent ejaculate has just been riding on my coat tails for the last 80 years... no, he's not ready yet mother, not ready at all."

We'd undress, go through the motions of getting ready for bed, and then crawl into our matrimonial bed, and fall asleep, back to back.

I grew up watching Julie Newmar dress in almost painted- on leotards as Cat Woman, in the classic Batman TV show. She would elude and seduce Batman and Robin in the cunningest of ways, only to be caught again in the most ridiculous of ways.

I always wondered what went on once the cameras panned away, and it was just Batman, Robin, and Cat Woman. Would they play their own version of "cat and mouse"?

I feel that Batman would be all that Cat Woman could want in a man, with his pre-labeled "pull this zipper for cock" ap on his pants. But at the same time, I feel that Batman, being Robin's mentor and adoptive father (of sorts) would probably tell him to have at it.

I can only assume that Robin would be just TERRIBLE at anything related to coitus.

When Jane leaves her husband she has a lot of sex.

The needing of the sex is like the need of the drink and the justice, and the bird settles only momentarily before his wild wings start up again.

I fantasise about having sex with the Bosnian photographer. He has a photograph on his wall of a female soldier with a gun in her arms.

“The real revolution will be when women carry arms,” said a character in a Calvino novel.

The real revolution is Jane Tennison.

I dreamt I did a twenty-year performance work where as a seventy-year-old woman I start making vaginal vases. The Dunedin Public Art Gallery has shown basically every one of my male peers, but when I'm ninety they see my genius and give me a retrospective of my vases. At the opening I smash every single vase and laugh hysterically and then have a stroke and die.

I really like to fantasise about two men smiling at one another and holding one another's hands and talking about their problems. It's a non-sexual fantasy. I just like imagining them being happy in each other's company and supporting one another emotionally. So say one of them had a really bad day at work, and feels like no one at work likes him or believes he's capable, and the other one tells him he's great and talented and kind and good and one day they will all see that. Sometimes they also go and get eclairs and lattes together; there's a bakery near their apartment and they like to try the weekly new flavours.

When I was younger I watched the film Howl's Moving Castle. Howl was beautiful. He had a deep voice, but graceful and slender features. There was a simultaneous sense of clarity and anguish to him. I think I fell in love with him because he existed in a way, but he was also totally fabricated, totally shaped by someone else's/a group of people's imagined desires. My fantasy would be to spend a day with Howl within his animated world.

I have chickens. About ten of them. I am in the garden collecting berries as they squawk about my feet. It is late summer and I am Ma. My arms are wobbling as I carry the berries in a bowl to the kitchen. It's a bit of a dilemma – as I am Pa too, and suggest we have a beer on the lawn. The confluence of our conversation as the same person, but split in two, means that the back and forth is easy, but still offers surprising topics and digressions. I think the sun will shine forever on us. The children swarm, wanting their tea.

Sometimes I fantasise that I have a penis. My first experiment would be to walk into the conversation of some very important-looking men and just interject every few seconds over the top of them with my own thoughts. I would pull out my penis and hold it into their faces and ask them to "mansplain" that to me a little louder. They would probably be jealous because my penis would be bigger than theirs. Next, I would probably go to the doctor and get my penis checked out. I have always been seriously curious about the whole "visiting the doctor to check your penis thing". Next I would begin my sexual revolution. I would make it a point to find lovely women of all sorts and make them feel like the most beautiful creatures on the face of the earth. Last thing I would do with my penis before I finally had to say goodbye to it is probably pet it a little, maybe have a cast made for memory’s sake, and I would name it. His name would be Phillip.

I have very vivid dreams about Drake regularly.

He is never an asshole... he's always genuinely interested in my day and there's always steamy chemistry and crazy animal attraction.

We always kiss and sometimes we get to second base... but then he always stops because he doesn't want to hurt me... he doesn't want me to become just another ho... but he's not ready to be exclusive either. So we just cuddle. Then he takes me out for dinner and we talk about music and evolution, and he tells me how happy he is to have me in his life.

“Our time will come”, he says.

I stare at the woman across from me dipping her toe into the pool to test the water. I can see that the concept of her body being anything but a body, simply does not occur to her. The moment of pulling her very light linen tunic off over her head and skiffle-skuffling down with her shorts, is a nothing moment. She is not thinking about exposing herself. She is not feeling shame. She is only thinking of moving through water. Her swimsuit is as plain and unadorned as the contours of her body. Lone lean lines, long, very slow curves. I stare behind my sunglasses, head tilted down to suggest I am reading my magazine. It is clear she would act no differently if a thousand people were watching her. Every day, many times a day, I fantasise about being myself and walking on the earth without shame. I am fat. I am inhuman.

I am dancing in a kitchen. The kitchen is in an old house, and the window above the sink looks out onto a garden. Two trees face each other out there, and wild flowers grow near a low wall at the back of the lawn. It’s the end of the day. The last sunlight falls onto the black and white tiles of the kitchen floor, onto my naked feet. I dance in a close embrace with a man whose name I never know. I can feel the heft of his body against mine, his stubble on my cheek. We move around in a slow, slow circle. I can hear the voice of Billie Holiday coming from the stereo, how it fills up the living room, the hallway, the space above the stone sink. Water drips from one of the brass taps. I’m wearing jeans, and a shirt with a fresh stain on it. My hair is unwashed. We kiss. Dirty dishes are stacked in the sink. We kiss again. I open my eyes and look over his shoulder, at the kitchen wall, and I feel as if I could breathe out gold dust right now.

I dreamt that I saw you and put my hand behind your back. Our hands clasped in a discreet acknowledgement of knowing each other. Really knowing each other.

I swim out from Princess Bay to the South Island, but a storm comes and drags my body back against the rocks and my body melts like honey.

I fantasise about meeting Barack Obama. I do it all the time. I meet him somewhere, explain I can't believe I am meeting Barack Obama and then tell him how much I love him. It’s not awkward, because Michelle is there and I love her too. I have never wanted to meet a politician so much in my whole life. Barack, fuck the naysayers – you're a beacon. A beautiful black beacon.

I have always had a fascination with the female armpit, and with the various maintenance of said area from woman to woman. Each one is sexy in its own way, and each and every one, I long to bury my face into.

The cute nurse at work outlining with kisses the distal margin of my upper trapezius.